IPL 2012 Live: Mumbai Indians v Royal Challengers Bangalore Preview

With teams moving towards the latter few matches in the Indian Premier League, Wednesday will see Mumbai Indians taking on Chennai Super Kings for their first head-to-head meeting of the season.

With 14 points from 11 matches, Mumbai Indians are in a relatively healthy position than their rivals. In a match where they looked almost dusted, Dwayne Bravo stole the show with 14 runs off three balls to steal the win for them.

However, the team needs to do better than this to avoid the situation that almost cost them the game. They lost seven wickets in the space of 25 runs including four batsmen dismissed without scoring, after Sachin Tendulkar and Rohit Sharma had led the way with well-paced half centuries before they collapsed.

The bowlers are not much of a worry with Lasith Malinga picking up wickets as usual while RP Singh also contributed valuably.

For Royal Challengers Bangalore, their surprise win against Deccan Chargers must have given them the much-needed morale boost.

With 11 points from as many matches, the team needs a few more wins before they can consider themselves safely in the hunt for the playoffs.

Against Deccan Chargers, they chased down a stiff total of 182 thanks to AB de Villiers’ perfect aggression at the end as he blazed his way to 47 runs off a mere 17 balls. Prior to that, Tillakaratne Dilshan scored freely on his way to 71 from 54 balls.

Chris Gayle, though had a rare failure, is still the trump card and as long as he stays at the crease, anything can happen. The bowlers are a sign of worry though with only Muttiah Muralitharan ending up with figures of some respectability as he replaced Daniel Vettori. It will be interesting to see whether Vettori will continue to remain out of the side or if he comes back into the 11.